What Is Joanna Murphy's Artistic Concept of Art as Translation?

Joanna Murphy's artistic concept treats painting as a form of translation: an idea or experience is not copied onto canvas but redefined through paint. On her site, this is described as art "highlighting art as a form of translation where ideas are redefined through paint." The practical takeaway for a viewer is that her paintings are not meant to be read as literal records of a subject. They are the painted equivalent of a translated text — related to the original, but changed by the language it now speaks.

The core idea

Translation here is not a metaphor for copying. It is a metaphor for transformation.

• An idea enters as one thing. A thought, memory, place, or feeling exists first in a non-painted form.
• Paint is the second language. The act of painting forces that idea into color, surface, edge, and gesture.
• What comes out is redefined. The finished painting is a new version of the idea, shaped by the limits and possibilities of the medium.

This is why the concept matters to how you look at the work. If you expect a painting to match a source exactly, you will read the differences as errors. If you accept translation as the premise, the differences are the point.

How the idea shows up in the paintings

Because the concept is about redefinition rather than reproduction, the visible evidence tends to appear in how the paint behaves rather than in what it depicts.

Look at the surface, not just the subject

In a translated painting, the handling of paint carries meaning. Layers, revisions, and visible decisions are where the "translation" happens. A passage that looks unresolved may be the moment an idea was rephrased rather than abandoned.

Expect interpretation over documentation

The site frames the work around ideas being redefined through paint, not around accurate depiction. So when you view a piece, a useful question is: what did this idea become once it was painted, rather than what does this painting show?

Treat each work as a version

If painting is translation, no single canvas is the definitive statement. Each painting is one rendering of an idea, the way a poem is one rendering of a meaning that could be said another way.

Why the concept is useful to a buyer or viewer

Understanding the translation premise changes what you are evaluating.

For someone considering a purchase, this matters because you are not buying a record of something. You are buying a specific translation — a particular resolution of an idea into paint that exists only in that work.

Applying the concept when you look at the work

A short method for viewing with this idea in mind:

1. Identify the apparent starting point. What idea, place, or feeling seems to be the source?
2. Notice what paint changed. Where has color, texture, or composition shifted the idea away from a literal version?
3. Ask what the new version says. What does the idea mean now that it has been redefined in paint?
4. Check whether the translation holds. Does the painted version feel like a coherent statement in its own language?

The expected result is that you stop judging the work against an imagined original and start reading it as its own statement.

Common sticking points

• "It doesn't look like the thing." Under this concept, that is not a failure. It is the translation doing its work.
• "Which painting is the real one?" There is no single original. Each painting is a version.
• "How do I know what it means?" The meaning is in the painted result, not in a caption or a source image.

Where to go next

The concept is best tested against actual work rather than described in the abstract. Browsing the paintings on joannamurphy.com with the four-step viewing method above will show you how consistently the translation idea operates across different pieces — and whether that approach to painting is one you want to live with.